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DraftPlus is a powerful tool on your iPad to create wireframes of your presentations or to publish the final version, when you are not at your desktop computer.

Starting from version 1.0.8 you can use the frames to create custom templates of pages, stickers…anything.

Let’s see how…

If you use presentations in your everyday office work, you have already reused presentations or old slides to produce : updated reports, newsletters etc. etc.

DraftPlus makes everything quicker and you can produce pdf presentations with the very same quality you are used to at your desktop computer.

In this example we will create a presentation only with one page, the one we want to save as a template.

Our page template will have a title, three text paragraphs, a table and an highlighted paragraph for the final message. To show the page layout, here the 3 paragraphs have dashed borders, but we will remove them, later on.

Using frames

Each sticker can become a frame. When a sticker is set as a frame, every other sticker within its boundaries can be moved as a group.

Every sticker can be customised and stored as a custom sticker. If you save as custom sticker a frame, also all the stickers included in the group are stored.

This is the quickest way to create custom pages and reuse them among projects or share them with your team members….

In the figure below we added on the page a sticker and we positioned as page background. The size of the sticker is the size of the page (here 1024×768 pixels), so all the others page items are grouped.

If you move now the new added sticker, all the other elements follow.

Create a custom sticker

Using the sticker settings panel, we add the frame sticker as custom item to either the project or the group library. If you add the object to the group library, all the projects you create inside the group, will be able to use the new items. Since we are adding a frame that contains the right page layout we need, we can now go on any new project or page and add the new sticker.

When the page contains the text we want, we make the frame transparent and remove the borders.

Draft+ makes it easy to create your prototype of presentation but it is not just that…

You can use Draft+ to publish your final work too and most important, you can create professional looking slides in literally 1 minute!

The problem with “old” type of office application:
With standard office software, you usually need two or three applications to add in one slide tables and charts. You need one app to create a presentation and some other external party to generate charts or input data.
More, everytime you edit a table with some data, charts need to be formatted again, the labels need to be moved to avoid overlapping, you need to reconsider if the style of the chart or the scale used is still good enough for the space you want to allocate in the slide…

Tailored for tablets
Draft+ is developed for iPads, meaning we reduced to the minimun the steps you need to take to create an effective presentation.
It is intuitive, everything you need is just one tap away…

Work with data tables
You can add table to a slide inserting a data-cube object.
This item is a group of data information that can be easily reshaped according to your needs.
You insert the data once and after you choose the way you want to present them selecting the proper style.

When you finish inputing the data, you can choose another table style…

…or you might want to present the same table as a chart…

About the chart business
The app will add a chart series for each numeric column of the table.
The first column of the table will be used as legend entries.

Few important things to notice about the automatic chartings:

1. Series are organised in a way that will always ensure visibility of the data.
2. Colours are selected automatically starting from the main theme colour.
3. Colours are always selected to present the right contrast and visibility.
4. The labels for the values never overlaps.
5. The legend is built automatically and can be placed in different location.

You are out of your office to meet a client, you’ve got your presentation ready, perfect slides, charts and suddenly your team or people from the office call and tell you that the data you are using in your charts is wrong and it needs to be changed before the meeting with the client…

You spent all the night before creating a perfect slide, adjusting the chart colours and labels to create a perfect presentation and now with the new data, everything will have to be edited again…

Chart are tricky objects…they are a powerful mean to represent information BUT, sometimes they require some estensive editing to look professional and clean.

If you have an iPad and you have installed “Draft+” this would not be a problem anymore…because this App generates automatically charts from any added table and ensure that the visibility (colours,fonts, spacing) is always the right one.

So you edit the table with the new data and with a gesture you have a professional-looking chart compliant with the theme you are using for your presentation.

If your table contains series using different metrics (integer, decimal, percentage), Draft+ will organise the series, grouping similar metrics.

Now just export the presentation in PDF and the meeting can take place smoothly…

When we decided to enter in the iPad’s software development business, we had the clear idea that what we would introduce in the market should have been something bringing value added to the office’s productivity.

When you work in an office there are many tasks that would require automation to reduce the effort and speed up productivity. Sometimes, budget constrains, might reduce the amount of automation versus a more intensive use of human resources.

The final purpose of our Apps is to introduce office-automation or best practice at a very affordable cost. If you have an iPad at office, you already believe that the business is moving toward a more mobile version. The iPad is the extension of your computer, you can do additional tasks just everywhere!

The maps businessThe first set of applications we introduced are related to the report-publishing business. You work in a multinational company, you need to produce periodic reports with maps and data, where would you find the right map?

Let’s not shoot higher than we need…Certainly there are many software out there creating maps. On internet you can find many companies providing that kind of service.Some of them are very expensive and/or would require your company to purchase licenses. In most of the cases, if the only thing you need is a map for a presentation, these solutions are not what you are looking for…

…but still we want to look professional:Internet provides today also with free available solutions that could fit (partially) the task to create a thematic map or just a world map with colours indicating a footprint,some distribution,etc.Very often, these solutions are free but also have some limited customisations (or they add a logo or a copyright notice in the footprint).Presentations that are aimed to be sent to the high management cannot have embedded copied (or/and somehow modified) content from internet or other sources. Adding these kind of pictures in the presentation, will make it look like a draft version or just not professional enough… More, if your target audience is a room full of people (e..g presenting on stage), you really don’t want to show them additional distracting details that are not 100% compliant with your company (e.g. other companies logos).

Considering all the reasons above, we decided to build two distinct applications,helping people to create quickly, fully customisable maps, for any document or presentation.

WorldMap+: your iPad can now generate images of vectorial maps, with the colours you need, no logos, no additional not-needed information.You choose the countries,the colours, the style and the resolution; the app does the rest and you can use the resulting image in any document you need. More…you can re-use the previous maps and add details or change colours; so if you do periodic reporting, your maps will always look identical in shape and selection, and alignment,plus you will be presenting the updated version. WorldMap+ does not only generates maps….you can create reports with notes and descriptions or you can archive the projects. You can work with people in parallel or you can merge data from other projects. Every functionality in WorldMap+ has been tuned in a way that you make the most out of your iPad and your time. The result has always a professional-look.

WorldMap+

Thematic+: it is an app to generate thematic maps. You decide which country to present, which values, which intervals and the app produces beautiful professional maps with legend and descriptions. You can use Thematic+ to create an overview of acoverage or a distribution.Also this App, contains functionalities that will help you working in groups and review the draft versions. The images are fully customisable, so you can choose, colours,style and backgrounds to best match your company themes. Adding a thematic map to your presentation can really change the way your audience accepts the message.

You meet your boss and you come back with the task of putting together a presentation. It needs to be ready in a couple of days.

Have you ever been in this situation?

You might have already some ideas or a set of slides that you used in the past, nevertheless, the time is your enemy.

You need to share the requirements with your team members, decide what to put and what to exclude, you need to work in parallel and most important, you need to communicate what it is required, clearly.

This situation would require concentration, figuring out what to present, drawing sketches on several papers, handwriting the major titles…etc etc

After, you would shared the papers with your team, ask for first inputs, assign to some of them the task to merge the contents in a final deck,etc,etc.

So your papers run through the team/the office and maybe at a certain point, after several reviews and hours, become less and less clear…how many papers did you use?

If your team is spread along regions (or world wide), the task is even more complex…

Of course the task is still duable but there is a better way to do it, if you have an iPad…using Draft+ (Draft Plus).

Draft+ is an App than runs on IOS7 or higher, designed for exactly these kind of tasks.

You drammatically speed up your productivity, particularly creating the first drafts of you slide deck, merging all your inputs and maintain a history of your works so that next time, you don’t have to go searching for an old paper…somewhere.

You can control and communicate your versions remotely so that you can easily merge, review and add changes.

No need of using papers anymore! It is even environmentally friendly…you only need to print the very last version,if you needed on paper.

You can start with building a clear storyline for your presentation, maybe just the titles at the beginning…Arrange the pages according to the storyline you want to present.Adding more content…and finally creating the first draft slides.

You can use Draft+ to create the final PDF version of your slides or just send the file as a guideline for the editor, the one who is going to produce the very final version for the management.

Draft+ is fully customisable and you can paste content (images and text) from websites, other documents or other Apps that allow the copy function on the iPad.

How many times you installed a free App on your iPad and then after a while you discover that to actually use it, you need to login with one of the most post popular social networks?

The login screen appears as soon as you try to create something.

Problem is, if I want to use my App for office work, I don’t want to publish it on the internet…I might not even want people outside my company that i am working on something.This becomes true particularly when you create presentations on targets,sales or any other confidential information. In those cases, you want to keep the “circle of trust” as small as possible.

At morePaths.com we don’t ask for your personal information, we care about your privacy and you decided what and when to share your work.

Of course in all our Apps we embedded several ways to share information. You can decide to keep everything on your iPad or to load it in cloud, if you want.

We believe simple is better, so the iPad gallery and the e-mails are the preferred means that you will use to share your data.

Draft+ | Example of sharing capabilities

The iPad gallery is a fantastic tool that can be used in many ways…you can export a map or a presentation from our Apps and directly present it using the default presentation capabilities of your iPad.With few touches on the screen, you can present your content in front of an audience.

The e-mail is an extremely useful way to share information. Using e-mails you can share images of your work, automatically include notes and suggestions and most important , you control who receives the content.

All our products come with embedded encryption capabilities, meaning that once you decide to share something, you can do it in a secure way. Projects, images or pdf files can be shared across the internet encrypted and only who has the same App and a password can read/edit the content.

Working in parallel is a must for us, you work on your project (map,presentation,etc.) but at a certain point, you need the feedback of the team or you require other information. The way we built are Apps, allows you to import or export project easily and at each import a new version of the project is created; so you can version your work and always be sure that you can walk-back to previous versions.This system is thought for teams or people who interact from different locations and need constant updates.

If you are a manager, you will gather with your team to discuss what the slide deck should contain and how you would like to look like. You communicate this on paper, drawing sketches that sometimes might lead to different interpretations and additional loops of reviews.

If your team is a virtual one, meaning spread in different regions, the number of reviews and the clarity of the guidance will make the difference in terms of time and results.

You can use Draft+ and your iPad to build the structure you want, the notes, the descriptions, the formatting and then share them via email.

With Draft+ you can give a flavour of what you need in a very effective way:

– Build a storyboard that tells the story you want to tell.

– Send projects to be reviewed.

– Keep tracks of the changes.

– Add notes on snapshots of the pages to comment additional changes.

Let’s have a look to it in more details…

Use case: Present an update about sales in your regions.

Executive SummaryUsing Draft+ with few touches on the screen you can create a slide like this.

The idea is to present two charts and a main message to introduce the story of the deck

You can paste on the page some images from your iPad’s gallery, if you have them or you can add 2 chart place holder stickers, like in this case.

We flip the page and also add a description of what the slide shall present, a more descriptive text, giving additional information about when the first draft should be ready.

Once the slide is ready, you can decide to share it in different formats, depending if your are reviewing a project or you are sending your guidelines for the deck to an editor.

Publishing Slide deck in PDF

The whole slide deck can be exported as a series of images of the pages you included.

The pages are reproduced as you see them, so if you want to added some pictures from the gallery, they also will be rendered.

If you choose (in the project settings) to publish the pdf with a cover page, your pdf file will have an additional page at the beginning presenting the title of the project and the project description.

An additional option is also to include the page notes. If this options is set, the pdf file will have an additional text page added after each original slide.

Publishing Slide deck Outline

This format allows you to communicate easily the layout of the pages and the description of the content at once. The information is available on one page and it is exported ashtml file. If you have a presentation with many slides, you are using a low band internet connection and you want to send quickly the document, you can use this format.